Yay NPR for getting it correct on the first try- economics drives consumption (to a point). Also interesting- based on the NPR meat map, highest meat consumption occurs in places with climate and geography most hospitable to growing grasses meat likes to consume.

What makes us is that human being prefer meat. The only reason they don't eat meat is generally because they are too poor to buy meat. The famous Mediterranean diet is no longer practiced in the Italian villages where it was discovered during World War II. Why? The people there got richer and started eating meat. God NPR is stupid.

I guess the obvious question to the NPR editors is: What other Mozambiquan or Bangladeshi traits should we follow? Because obviously we Americans are doing "it" wrong. (*rolls eyes*).

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Perhaps the choice of those countries doesn't fit the narrative of "America is the epitome of excess" that the press loves to force down our throats. After all, telling everyone that the US comes in second to Luxembourg (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/03/world-meat-consumption_n_1475760.html) doesn't make for a good NPR story, does it? Nor does the point that Uruguay's beef consumption is nearly half-again that of the US's. But then again, properly contextualizing "the point" has never really been the dominant news media's strength, has it?

On Luxembourg: Meat production exceeds 15,000 tons annually. Because the nation produces 40 percent more beef than it consumes, meat is one of the few agricultural products in which Luxembourg is self-sufficient.

The U.S. runs on chicken now. What someone needs to invent is a chicken born without a head that grows to eating size.

~ I don't know! It has a feeding tube or some shit. I'm not inventing it right now, I'm just brainstorming here.

But if it never knew it was alive, had no eyes or brain, couldn't we just eat them nuggets guilt free?

This can't be that hard to do with modern technology. I mean a chicken barely has a head now, and I've seen them get around just fine without one, so could someone get on that right away. I love chicken, but I feel bad about it.

Doing a little research (evidently NOT done by NPR) I've learned that Americans earn $28.60 to every dollar earned by a Bangladeshi, and $83.10 to every dollar earned by a citizen Mozambique. By that standard our 12-fold meat consumption looks positively vegan.

I agree unreservedly with the overwhelming sentiment here: NPR is stupid. The reason for this is the editors, producers, on-air personalities, and reports are the most left-wing of any large media organization in this country, which is saying a lot. ABC, the most balanced over-the-air news bureau is still at least 85% hard-core "progressive" in outlook.

Projecting the trend to NPR suggests the proportion of level-headed objective prosencephalon thinkers (i.e. conservatives) to amygdalae-dominate emoters (progressives, liberals, Democrats) is vanishingly small, it amounts to the shifting mood of one NPR staffer (Each morning said staffer has a refreshing shower followed by a good cup o' joe, which arouses her forebrain for about 20 minutes.) What they need is a housecleaning of the more knee-jerk liberal types -- those paleomammalians like Nina Totenberg in whom stimulae in the form of meaningless statistics go no further than the spinal cord -- and replace them with newly-retired Marine officers. They also need to hire more men. In non-technical fields NPR is 91% female. The estrogen vapors in their newsroom forms a pea-souper fog which is deadly to neurons.

I haven't been to Mozambique but the infrastructure of their country was pretty much reduced to stone age levels during the reign of the communists in the 80's. Mozambique remains dependent upon foreign assistance for more than half of its annual budget, and in 2008 54% of the population remained below the poverty line. Subsistence agriculture continues to employ the vast majority of the country's work force and smallholder agricultural productivity and productivity growth is weak. Only 5% of the land is used for agriculture.

I was in Ethiopia a few years ago and while there I dined on goat, camel, chicken, lamb and mystery meat (who knows but the sauce it was in tasted good). It was all tough and stringy for the most part. What cattle I saw were scrawny (think Pharaoh's dream in Genesis) and probably did cook up to tender.

One wonders if the folks at NPR ever get out of the their Beltway bubble or if the travel if they ever go outside of the capitals, resorts and university towns.

I was at my cardiologists office yesterday afternoon getting a report on my echo cardiogram I had last week. While waiting for the Dr. I spied a chart put out by some 'health' group. The only flesh they recommended was fish, turkey or chicken. Beef, lamb or pork were not on their menu.

I too have not visited Mozambique. However, a chap who worked for me occasionally was a Peace Corp volunteer in that benighted land in the 1990s (I assume after the Soviet influence had waned somewhat) He worked on a project aimed to establish aquaculture (tilapia farms) in the hilly inland regions where the people are very protein-deprived. He supervised the construction of the ponds and the diversion of a stream to supply fresh water, which Mozambican peasants dutifully performed. After the infrastructure was built USAID delivered several tons of fingerlings to stock the breeder ponds, fingerlings the peasants promptly ate. 'nuf said.

To the writer's credit, he did offer a no-shit answer to his no-shit question: Americans eat more meat because we can afford to. I was expecting some odd answer like, "the military-meat complex subversively manipulates the American people into eating more meat than is healthy or rational or tolerant."

Speaking of animals, I just heard this joke which I thought was tremendously funny: Why does a milking stool only have three legs? Because the cow has the udder. Hahahahaha!

"I too have not visited Mozambique. However, a chap who worked for me occasionally was a Peace Corp volunteer in that benighted land in the 1990s (I assume after the Soviet influence had waned somewhat) He worked on a project aimed to establish aquaculture (tilapia farms) in the hilly inland regions where the people are very protein-deprived. He supervised the construction of the ponds and the diversion of a stream to supply fresh water, which Mozambican peasants dutifully performed. After the infrastructure was built USAID delivered several tons of fingerlings to stock the breeder ponds, fingerlings the peasants promptly ate. 'nuf said."

AND! To go off on a libertarian-ish rant --

This is a property rights problem.

People need to know what belongs to whom and that their property will be respected and *protected* by the community.

A nice, productive, communal fish pond that even an entirely illiterate villagers understands could produce a great deal of yummy talapia in a relatively short time is useless if the sure result of waiting will be that everyone else eats the fish.

People aren't STUPID, and they know very well that the choice is between eating a bunch of minnows now, or getting nothing.

And this is because, and only because, there is no expectation of respecting individual property rights. Either the culture doesn't support it or else the do-gooders set up the project on purpose to be a community/communal enterprise.

Profit might be unseemly and the people might be poor, but there would *be* fish. (And likely a few on-going jobs, too.)

Same goes for the person who has a goat and decides not to eat it. Or who has a field. Or who is trying to save money to buy a fruit scale.

People have to know that their property will be respected and protected rather than looted, be it by their neighbors or by the government itself.

Shoot, if you want to see how meat consumption follows economics, just look at my home country of Korea. You don't even need statistics--just look at the people. Everyone used to think Koreans were just small people, but you see the kids there now and they are tall and built out. Capitalism = Quality Protein (= Better Bodies).

Meat is very inefficient from a calorie perspective, at least the way it's raised in the US. We're feeding grains to animals instead of just eating the grains ourselves. If you live in a place where it's not uncommon for people to go hungry there's not going to be a lot of meat eating because grains will be going to people instead of animals, and the animals will be eating grass or leftovers.

If the peak oil people are right food prices will rise sharply in the US over the next few decades, and we'll be eating less meat as well.

Synova wrote:People aren't STUPID, and they know very well that the choice is between eating a bunch of minnows now, or getting nothing.

I don't know why the project failed in Mozambique, though failure seems to be a big part of the local culture (reduced expectations helps socialist regimes survive) My friend also worked a similar project in Sierra Leon (another former Portuguese colony, btw) which worked out well enough. What I took away from the story was that the Mozambicans didn't mentally connect the pond construction with the delivered fish. Being under a Marxist dictatorship since independence the peasants were used to being dragooned into pointless public works projects -- cut these trees down -- dig a ditch from here to there -- in the 80s every adult over 14 was required to give 30 hours a month free labor to the state doing stuff that wasted time and energy and accomplished exactly zero -- they evidently saw the ponds as just another useless exercise.

Eating more meat means eating more protein, which means taller, stronger people. Compare the map from the NPR site showing the amount of meat eaten by South Korea and North Korea, for instance. Same ethnic stock, but the South Koreans eat four times as much meat as their cousins to the North, and are a few inches taller because of it.

Locally, we have a lot of Guatemalans in the Hispanic community, and they are very short; most of the men are probably about 5'3", the women even shorter. But their kids are about the same height as American kids, so I'm guessing the adults growth may have been stunted by low protein consumption as children.

@ Eric...Have you been asleep? The Peak Oil People were always dead wrong.

It was not a rational thought anyway. The amount of discovered oil says NOTHING about the amount of undiscovered oil.

Peak Oil was a grade B scare tactic like CO2 is a green house gas and images of species going extinct. Lies, lies and damn lies was all that has ever been. Scarcity rumors were only a tool to drive up prices.

After the past 5 years another 600+ years of oil reserves has appeared and the rest of the unexplored 98% is awaiting the man who uses the technology the best.

Peak oil was wrong because what is true for the US isn't true of the world. Oil production peaked in the US when imports became cheaper (and now that imports became more expensive domestic production is rising). The same reason can't be true for the entire planet unless we find oil on Mars.

Natural resource production is a function of technology more than anything else. If we need it bad enough, we find new ways of producing it.

A better question is "What makes an American eat ten or twelve times more meat than the average person in Mozambique or Bangladesh & subsequently die of cancer and heart disesae over 50x's more (average!) often than an average person from mozambique, bangladesh, or any country outside of australia and usa "" and the answer is brain washing. Advertisements embedded in the brain (that fastfood, processed food, and meat & dairy are good to eat, although the nutritional value says otherwise). The fact that 99% of americans are sheeple (and 1% rich and controls those sheeple) . The fact that people will do whatever to fit in and not care about the health or nutrition.

it was proven to try and have an intelligent conversation with a cowboy at a steak house. it's impossible. the high fat meat (& eating meat in general) clouds your arteries, brain functioning making you stupid. Alzheimers, diabetes, cancer, stroke, and many other dis-ease only comes from eating dead abused commercialized hormonal gmo meat that all amerikkkans eat to make sure stockholders get the most of their money back (ROI) noo ne cares about you dumb sheeple who eat meat and are tooo dumb and fluoridated pineal to grow your own veggies and become vegan.

the center of disease control and prevention says over 80% of amerikkkans will die of preventable disease caused by their diets of meat and dairy. but DONT STOP EATING cuz we need you to die. think if 80% of people didnt die just because of the unhealthy food they ate. then we'd have a problem like china (where they eat healthy) and are running out of food and can only have 1 baby. so keep eating to your death sheeple!!

DID YOU KNOW EATING MEAT MAKES YOUR PENIS SMALLER? WHY DO U THINK MEN NEED VIAGRA? EATING TOO MUCH MEAT!! GO VEGAN WE HAVE THE BEST SEX (ur girl knows it). listening to the answers here i can already see the meat has clouded most of your brain normal functioning. so keep eating meat. if anyone really wonders why meat is bad, here is 1 of many videos where a PHD doctor explains how the fat clogs the arteries (why men who eat meat need viagra to get it up, get stroke, heart attack, bone and joint pain and that feeling of getting old. a vegan feels good at 20, 40, 80, or 100) "FOODS THAT KILL" (full documentary) : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNCGkprGW_o&noredirect=1